Levels Of Homicide Research Articles

Obstetric violence in the context of community violence: The case of Mexico

This study examines the relationship between community violence and obstetric violence in Mexico, where the so-called “War on Drugs” has led to sustained high levels of homicides and one-third of pregnant people report experiencing abusive treatment from healthcare providers during childbirth. We combine unique nationally representative survey data on experiences of obstetric violence for births that occurred between 2016 and 2021 with administrative homicide data at the month-municipality level. Using fixed effects models, we investigate how different manifestations of obstetric violence relate to community violence in the short-, medium-, and long-term. Results suggest that the intensity of community violence matters for obstetric violence. Specifically, we find that sustained high-intensity homicidal violence is associated with an increased risk of mistreatment at childbirth, particularly in the form of physical abuse and non-consensual care. Associations are stronger among adolescent, low-educated, and urban respondents. Addressing obstetric violence requires recognising the structural role of sustained high-intensity community violence and the normalisation of violent behaviour that exposure to such environmental stressors may create.

Psychological Well-Being and Job Satisfaction of Kenyan Police Officers

Purpose: Police work is a high risk job in terms of stress and low psychological wellbeing. In Kenya, police officers have presented high levels of suicide, homicide, assault and intimate partner abuse and this has become a matter of concern. 
 Methodology: This theoretical paper applies the hermeneutic phenomenological approach to study psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction of police officers as a phenomenon and how it affects police work. Extensive and systematic literature review is done using search engines like google scholar, web of science and Scopus. The search includes historical and contemporary scholarly data which reveals how police work is understood by scholars and the media. This data is then assessed and interpreted to discern the emerging patterns, findings and conclusions.
 Findings: Statistics on the Kenya police service indicate that 20,000 police officers are either depressed or they present with various psychological disorders. Between 2016 and 2020 police have recorded within their ranks across the country 13 murders and 11 suicides per year without a break. Systematic literature view has revealed that high psychological wellbeing of police officers is imperative in order to remove or reduce psychological morbidity in police work. This not only decreases turnover, but also retains talent, and increases productivity. High psychological wellbeing also spills over to work teams and families in terms of happiness and wellbeing. Analysis of literature has also revealed that job satisfaction is one of the facets of psychological wellbeing at the work place.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: This paper proposes that police managers, and stakeholders should proactively put in place strategies that enhance job satisfaction and therefore improve the psychological wellbeing of police officers. Researchers in partnership with police management should also address the knowledge gap in explaining how police stressors finally precipitate the high rates of murders and suicide and implement solutions.

State hierarchies versus criminal hierarchies

Medellín in Colombia, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico show important similarities if the reference point is the chronically high levels of homicides, classified here as lethal violence. Robbery, extortion and kidnapping - characterized in this text as predatory violence - are also conceived as common practices that make coexistence difficult for the inhabitants of these three cities. But a finer reading of both types of violence and the multiple indicators that shape them requires a more precise identification of its relational components. Agents from various state institutions -mainly those nominally in charge of providing security- and members of criminal organizations (especially dedicated to drug trafficking) appear as first-level protagonists in the works that analyze the topic. But it cannot be ignored that neither the agents of government institutions for the enforcement of the law, nor the members of criminal organizations, act in a homogeneous manner. This text evaluates in a comparative way some of the ways in which the State hierarchies and criminal hierarchies have been configured and deployed on the ground in the three aforementioned cities. Approaching the topic from a hierarchical perspective contains the hypothesis that both types of hierarchy represent differentiated forms of social ordering. Understanding these alterities makes it necessary to observe the type of criminalized activities, the degree of organizational complexity that arises from them, the participating social agents -individuals or groups-, their interaction formats, as well as the different types of temporalities and territorialities. The approach of this article, comparative by definition, seeks to briefly explain overlapping spatialities, articulated evolutionary processes, interspersed forms of division of labor and different mechanisms of legitimation and insertion into local frameworks.

Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership, and Homicides: Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock

Abstract Do firearm purchase delay laws reduce aggregate homicide levels? Using variation from a six-month countrywide gun demand shock in 2012/2013, we show that U.S. states with legislation preventing immediate handgun purchases experienced smaller increases in handgun sales. Our findings indicate that this is likely driven by comparatively lower purchases among impulsive consumers. We then demonstrate that states with purchase delays also witnessed comparatively 2% lower homicide rates during the same period. Further evidence shows that lower handgun sales coincided primarily with fewer impulsive assaults and points toward reduced acts of domestic violence.

Changing Patterns of Domestic Homicide During Lockdown: Interrupted Time-Series Analysis in England and Wales

This study aimed to examine the effect of lockdown restrictions on domestic homicide incidents in England and Wales. We analyzed data on 1,104 domestic homicides recorded by the Home Office Homicide Index between January 2014 and March 2021 using interrupted time-series analysis. Findings showed an immediate drop in ex-partner homicides following the first lockdown and higher than expected levels of parent and child homicides at different points during the first, second and third lockdowns. Our results suggest a change in the composition of domestic homicide during lockdown and contribute to a more detailed understanding of the short-, mid- and long-term effects of lockdown measures on domestic homicide.

Did De-policing contribute to the 2020 homicide spikes?

ABSTRACT Some scholars claimed that a reduction in proactive enforcement, in the wake of the pandemic and George Floyd’s death, caused the levels of homicide to increase across U.S. cities. Using time series data in NYC, the present study examines whether there was an increase in homicides in 2020 and analyzes an association between de-policing, as measured by the number of police stops, and various types of homicide. The increases in gun, non-domestic, and gang homicides were significantly associated with decreased police stops in the wake of the pandemic and Floyd protests. The study discusses implications for research and policy.

What’s Past is Prologue: Civil War Violence and Post-War Criminal Homicides

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the connection between civil war violence and post-war criminal homicides. This paper finds that past civil war violence intensity and presence of armed groups in a community increases the level of criminal homicides three, five, and ten years later. These findings are based on our statistical regression analysis of subnational data from 1,100 municipalities in Colombia drawn from Registro Único de Víctimas, Colombian National Police, Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics, Colombian National Department of Planning, and Centre for Memory and History.

Crimes letais e o mercado ilegal de drogas no Brasil de 2006 a 2015: uma análise sob o ponto de vista da teoria da desorganização social e da teoria econômica do crime

Abstract Brazil has a high rate of homicide, whose increase in recent years seems to be closely related to the expansion of the illegal drug market. This study aims to analyze the role that socioeconomic factors (family instability, ethnic heterogeneity, unemployment rate, and average income) play in this escalation. The study uses pooled regression models and fixed and random effects, with panel data from 27 Brazilian states for the period 2006–2015. The results indicate that the illegal drug trade is positively correlated with the mortality rates in Brazil during 2006-2015. Furthermore, the results show family instability, ethnic heterogeneity, unemployment rate, and average income as crime enhancers. This research brings insights that help develop a better interpretation of Brazilian lethal violence: in the 1980s and 1990s, violence was mainly explained by economic factors. This study points to the fact that phenomena linked to social disorder are also correlated with the level of homicides in Brazilian states. Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature by incorporating other elements that suggest alternatives to mitigate violent crime in Brazil.

An Institutional Perspective to Understand Latin America’s High Levels of Homicide

Abstract Numerous studies have suggested that socio-economic structural factors offer the main reasons for international variations in homicide levels—where socio-economic conditions are better, lower levels of homicide are observed. In countries in Latin America, social and economic conditions have improved, yet high levels of homicide have remained. In this article, we examine a new line of reasoning, hypothesizing that the effectiveness of institutions (such as government justice agencies and the police) and poor controls for corruption are key factors for explaining the high levels of homicide in Latin America. We apply a random effects panel regression using a sample of 54 countries from Latin America and other parts of the world, and data for a 13-year period (2005–2017). We examine the relationships between homicide, government effectiveness, corruption and several structural variables to determine if the relationships between these variables are more apparent for countries in the Latin American region. We find that structural factors play less of a role in explaining the international variation in homicide levels, and that government effectiveness and corruption are significantly related to the high levels of homicide experienced in the Latin America region.

Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides

IntroductionThe effects of firearm sales and legislation on crime and violence are intensely debated, with multiple studies yielding differing results. We hypothesized that increased lawful firearm sales would not be associated with the rates of crime and homicide when studied using a robust statistical method. MethodsNational and state rates of crime and homicide during 1999-2015 were obtained from the United States Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Instant Criminal Background Check System background checks were used as a surrogate for lawful firearm sales. A general multiple linear regression model using log event rates was used to assess the effect of firearm sales on crime and homicide rates. Additional modeling was then performed on a state basis using an autoregressive correlation structure with generalized estimating equation estimates for standard errors to adjust for the interdependence of variables year to year within a particular state. ResultsNationally, all crime rates except the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–designated firearm homicides decreased as firearm sales increased over the study period. Using a naive national model, increases in firearm sales were associated with significant decreases in multiple crime categories. However, a more robust analysis using generalized estimating equation estimates on state-level data demonstrated increases in firearms sales were not associated with changes in any crime variables examined. ConclusionsRobust analysis does not identify an association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide. Based on this, it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms.

Attitudes towards the death penalty: An assessment of individual and country-level differences

Research on public attitudes to the death penalty has been predominantly understood through single nation-states, especially within the USA. Examinations of international differences in citizens’ support for the death penalty have been scarce, particularly among continents with a high volume of retentionist nations (e.g. Asia). In this paper, we draw on a dataset of 135,000 people from across 81 nations to examine differences in death penalty support. We find that residents of retentionist nations are generally more supportive of the death penalty than those from abolitionist nations. But this general difference masks important differences both within and between countries. At the country-level, residents of abolitionist nations with autocratic political systems and those with higher homicide levels were more likely to support the death penalty than residents of other abolitionist nations. At the individual level, greater support for a strong dictatorial-type leader and perceptions of political corruption are associated with increased support for the death penalty, but only in abolitionist nations. By contrast, more frequent religious worship, perceived egalitarianism in a nation, and support for the political performance of government reduced death penalty support in abolitionist nations but increased support in retentionist nations, while belief in individual responsibility and critical views towards ethnic minorities increased support for the death penalty across both abolitionist and retentionist nations.

THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA

THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA

What factors drive state firearm law adoption? An application of exponential-family random graph models

Guns are a ubiquitous feature of contemporary US culture, driven, at least partly, by firearms' constitutional enshrinement. However, the majority of laws intended to restrict or expand firearm access and use are formulated and passed in the states, leading to 50 different firearm-related legal environments. To date, little is known about why some states pass more restrictive or permissive firearm laws than others. In this article, we identify patterns of firearm law adoption across states, by framing the problem as a bipartite network (states connected to laws and laws connected to states) that is the result of a complex, and interconnected system of unobserved forces. We employ Exponential-family Random Graph Models (ERGMs), a class of statistical network models that allow for the dispensing of the assumptions of statistical independence, to identify factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of states adopting permissive or restrictive firearms laws over the period 1979 to 2020. Results show that more progressive state governments are associated with a higher chance of enacting restrictive firearm laws, and a lower chance of enacting permissive ones. Conservative state governments are associated with the analogous reversed association. States are more likely to adopt laws if bordering states have also adopted that law. For both restrictive and permissive laws the presence of a law in a neighboring state increased the conditional likelihood of a state having that law, that is laws diffuse across state borders. High levels of homicides are associated with a state having adopted more permissive, but not more restrictive, firearm laws. In summary, these results point to a complex interplay of state internal and external factors that seem to drive different patterns of firearm law adoption Based on these results, future work using related classes of models that take into account the time evolution of the network structure may provide a means to predict the likelihood of future law adoption.

The Effect of Capital Punishment on Terrorism in Saudi Arabia

Numerous studies investigate the deterrent effect of capital punishment on homicide levels, but no published study conducted to date focuses explicitly on the impact of capital punishment on terrorist activity. In addition, no research evaluates the possible deterrent effect of a mass execution. This study examines the influence of the mass execution of 47 terrorists by the Saudi government, which took place on January 2, 2016, on the frequency of terrorist attacks originating from within Saudi Arabia. Using missile and drone attacks that were launched from outside of Saudi Arabia as a statistical control variable, results generated in an interrupted time-series analysis show that the mass execution decreased the frequency of within-country terrorist attacks by approximately two attacks per month. Results further reveal that the Saudi military intervention in Yemen amplified within-country terrorist activity by nearly five attacks per month. These findings suggest that the use of capital punishment may prove to be useful in deterring terrorist attacks.

The Availability of Firearms and Levels of Homicideand Suicide Perpetrated with Their Use

The paper reviews the literature with a view to answering the question as to whether the easier availability of firearms affects the level of homicides and suicides with their use. The author compared Polish and other similar laws where the access to firearms is strictly regulated, as against systems where the availability of firearms is facilitated, either owing to liberal laws (Colombia, Brazil, Switzerland) or to Constitutional guarantees (USA, Mexico). The comparison revealed a correlation between the availability of firearms and levels of homicide and suicide by firearms.

The Influence of Government Effectiveness and Corruption on the High Levels of Homicide in Latin America

Most research that has examined the international variation in homicide levels has focused on structural variables, with the suggestion that socio-economic development operates as a cure for violence. In Latin America, development has occurred, but high homicide levels remain, suggesting the involvement of other influencing factors. We posit that government effectiveness and corruption control may contribute to explaining the variation in homicide levels, and in particular in the Latin America region. Our results show that social and economic structural variables are useful but are not conclusive in explaining the variation in homicide levels and that the relationship between homicide, government effectiveness, and corruption control was significant and highly pronounced for countries in the Latin American region. The findings highlight the importance of supporting institutions in improving their effectiveness in Latin America so that reductions in homicide (and improvements in citizen security in general) can be achieved.

The Effect of Absolute and Relative Deprivation on Homicides in Brazil

This paper investigates the effect of absolute deprivation (proxy unemployment) and relative deprivation (proxy income inequality) on homicide levels in Brazil. A database from the Brazilian Information System about Mortality and Census of the year 2000 and 2010 was used to estimate negative binomial models of homicide levels controlling for socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic factors. Findings show that unemployment and income inequality affect homicides levels and that the effect of the former is more pronounced compared to the latter. Moreover, the combination of income inequality and unemployment exacerbates the overall effect of deprivation on homicide levels.

Refugee Crisis, Valuation of Life, and Violent Crime

Abstract In the study of migrants and violence, the focus is often on the likely opportunities and motives of migrants to commit violence, and the effect of this on the level of crime. This article reconstructs the causal path differently. It considers the variation of the number of refugees as a logical proxy of a humane culture and studies the variation in the occurrence of homicides as causally conditioned by this culture. This article compares European and North American countries during the 2015–17 refugee crisis. It uses the number of accepted refugees per population, per Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and per area as proxies of valuation of life among host populations. Regardless of the type of burden a country will accept to rescue refugees, this willingness is associated with lower levels of homicide. Thus, in developed countries, security from violent crime cannot be an argument against humane refugee policies.

Homicide concentration and retaliatory homicide near repeats: An examination in a Latin American urban setting

Despite numerous attempts to decrease homicides in the Latin American region, high homicide levels have persisted. Examining four cities in Rio de Janeiro, the research reveals the intense geographic concentration of homicides in each city, but illustrates differences in the extent of homicide concentration when using a variety of crime concentration measures. Single events involving multiple homicides and a homicide near repeat pattern are observed, with almost all these incidents taking place in areas of homicide concentration. The findings suggest that programmes targeted to areas of homicide concentration, including interventions that suppress the likelihood of future incidents, could decrease homicides.

Differential Ability of Necrophagous Diptera to Colonize Concealed Resources: Empirical Evidence From a Field Experiment in Brazil.

Field studies in forensic entomology seem to assume that a cadaver is a resource equally accessible to flies, irrespective of the species' size, behavior, and sensorial capacity. We aimed to challenge this assumption by experimentally manipulating baited traps in order to test whether the accessibility to decomposing baits is related to the following: (i) the diversity of necrophagous dipterans; (ii) the body size of adults; and (iii) the female sexual maturity stage. The experiment was performed in a rainforest fragment in Northeastern Brazil, in an area characterized by high levels of homicides. Traps baited with decomposing chicken liver had three levels of access: easy (six openings on the trap), intermediate (three), and difficult (one). A total of 750 adults of Calliphoridae, Fanniidae, Muscidae, Phoridae, and Sarcophagidae were collected. Of the 18 species recorded, Megaselia scalaris was the most abundant (46.8%) followed by Lucilia eximia (29.7%) and Chrysomya megacephala (9.8%). The number of species increased significantly with the accessibility level, but overall abundance did not differ, as a consequence of the numerical dominance of M. scalaris. A strong female bias (>91%) was observed in all traps. For Calliphoridae specimens, 90% of the females caught in traps under intermediate and difficult access were sexually mature. By empirically demonstrating that limitation of access and exclusion of visual stimuli do not deter several dipteran species from reaching a substrate, we expand the knowledge on the factors that can shape the colonization of concealed human cadavers, including variables such as insect size and stage of sexual maturity.